Spiritual
Roses Aren’t Difficult In True Light,
Living Water and Biblical Soil

By
Carman Bradley

What
is true Light? The Light and the Law are
inseparable revelations from God:

I [Jesus Christ] am the light of the
world. Whoever follows me will never
walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. (John 8:12)

Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does
not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of
God’s One and Only Son. This is the
verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light
because their deeds were evil. Everyone
who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that
his deeds will be exposed. But whoever
lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that
what he has done has been through God.
(John 3:18-21)

Let no one deceive you with empty
words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are
disobedient. Therefore do not be
partners with them. For you were once
darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.
Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all
goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds
of darkness, but rather expose them.
For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in
secret. But everything exposed by the
light becomes visible, for it is light that makes everything visible. This is why it is said: ‘Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and
Christ will shine on you.’ (Ephesians
5:6-14)

Liberal
Christians, certainly pro-gay Christians, appear to wish for a revised
worldview in which a rewritten Gospel of Jesus Christ amputates the content of
the Law along with its convicting
intent, particularly as it applies to human sexuality. To evangelical eyes the pro-gay theological
goal is to alter the Gospel to ensure that Christ’s Light casts no sinful shadows.
Terms like obedience, sin, hell, judgment, guilt and condemnation are
expungedunder the new theological
mantra of an all-inclusive unconditional loving God, an “anything goes”
God. A god so indifferent that, as
Aldous Huxley declares: “He has become
nothing more than the faint and disappearing smile of the cosmic Cheshire
cat.” This new age mantra has also
been labeled the doctrine of cheap grace.

It
is true that God is for us. What is
more, He is for us even though our very nature is against Him. Moreover, he is not for us merely in a
general attitude, but He has effectively acted towards us. The measure of His “unconditional love” can
be summed up in the name of His Son.
Jesus Christ is the grace of God towards us. In contrast to pro-gay theology, the Christian worldview leaves
the authority of the Lawintact and records that Jesus is the empowering
source of the grace to overcome the unrighteousness, transgression, judgment
and condemnation instructed by the Law. Although Jesus alters the application of
so-called “cultural” laws ending hypocritical legalism regarding food, drink,
festivals and Sabbath activities, there is no evidence to substantiate a change
in application of the traditional morality provisions, directed at keeping a
righteous heart. Jesus declares:

Do not think that I have come to
abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill
them. I tell you the truth, until
heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a
pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.(Matthew
5:17-18)

Love
is at the core of this Law. And the Law is fundamentally an expression of the perfect character and
will of God. It would be impossible for
the Law to cease to be the ideal of
human morality. Rightly understood the Law has always demanded a heart
conformed to God. The regenerate (or
saved) are commanded to follow the Law and
are, to a large extent, enabled to fulfill the Law, by gracious guidance from the Holy Spirit and by a motive of
obedience anchored in the redeeming love of Jesus Christ. The Christian is under the obligation to
claim Christ as his first love and then to love his neighbor as himself
(Matthew 22:37-39). The Law is meant to define the unrighteous
dark shadows of life with the Light of
Jesus Christ to show the way and the truth and the life (John 14:6). The perfect obedience of Christ to the Law of God is not simply an example, but
the basis of the redemption of His people, who otherwise lay condemned by the Law:

But when the time had come, God sent
His Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we
might receive the full rights of sons.(Galatians 4:4-5)

God’s
grace received by the saved Christian does not mean the weak and careless
forgiveness of sins, for our pardon was bought by the judgment, condemnation
and execution of His One and Only
Son. It is the righteousness of the Law which illuminates and convicts us of
sin. This sin separates us from a Holy
God and points us toward God’s only solution for forgiveness and restoration -
Jesus Christ. If we allow the Law to be arbitrarily erased, for
self-serving purposes, we construct our own false reality. We think we live in the Light but we are actually in its shadow, making Christ’s sacrifice
in vain. The Law and Jesus Christ are paired and matched revelations. Much like male and female, the designed
purpose of one cannot be fulfilled without the other. Male and female are necessary to give us our first fleshly
birth. The Law (inanimate basis for conviction of sin) and
Jesus Christ are needed to bring about the second spiritual birth (the
infilling by the Holy Spirit). To erase the Law is to reimage Jesus Christ. And to wilfully reimage divine revelation
to suit human political exigencies is hugely wrong. Under the subject title Homosexuality,
the NIV Study Bible lists Romans
1:27, 1 Corinthians 6:9, 2 Peter 2:10 and Jude 1:8 as references reaffirming
Old Testament Law. Paul writes of the Law in his first letter to the church at Corinth:

The
fact that the homosexual is listed here is a key barrier to revisionism;
however, the targeting of the homosexual needs to be placed in the context that
all (you and me), if we are not born again of the Spirit through faith in
Christ’s atoning sacrifice, will not inherit
the kingdom of God (John 3:3-8).
The Law brings the
condemnation, but God has the same solution for the homosexual as He has for
you and me. Paul states in the next
verse of his letter:

And that is what you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified,
you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of
our God. (1 Corinthians 6:11)

Proponents
of cheap grace emphasize God’s willingness to forgive, often citing the
adulterous woman (John 8:10-11): “‘Woman,
where are they? Has no one condemned
you?’ ‘No one, sir,’ she added. ‘Then neither do I condemn you?’ Jesus
declared.” However, Christ’s grace
does not erase the Law, He concludes
His conversation with the woman by saying: “Go
now and leave your life of sin.” To the blind man that Jesus healed, He said, “See you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen
to you” (John 5:14). Although, all
judgment (separating the redeemed from the lost) has been given to Christ (John
5:22), the Law also remains a key
revelation of our perfectly righteous and holy God.

Another
barrier to liberal revisionism, regarding same-sex marriage, is the Law found in Matthew 19:4-6. Jesus gives the following context and
purpose for marriage:

Haven’t you read that at the beginning
the Creator made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man will
leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become
one flesh?’ So that they are no longer two but one.

Humanity
seeks a life philosophy for happiness and freedom. The Christian worldview for
maximizing one’s peace is a perfect
combination - the Law and the
redemptive grace of Jesus Christ. The
liberal pro-gay theologicalworldview
is to amputate the Law and demote
Jesus Christ to the equivalent of a historic sage like Mahatma Gandhi. The free sex advocate, Aldous Huxley, erases
God to gain his freedom. Pro-gay
theology cannot erase God; therefore the Gospel of Jesus Christ must be
reframed to adopt what is in reality a false freedom. Rudolf Bultmann offers an insightful articulation of the need for
the Law as God has revealed it:

Genuine freedom is not subjective
arbitrariness. It is freedom in
obedience. The freedom of subjective
arbitrariness is a delusion, for it delivers man up to his drives, to do in any
moment what lust and passion dictate.
This hollow freedom is in reality dependence on lust and passion of the
moment. Genuine freedom is freedom from
the motivation of the moment; it is freedom which withstands the clamor and
pressure of momentary motivations. It
is possible only when conduct is determined by a motive which transcends the
present moment, that is, by law.
Freedom is obedience to a law of which the validity is recognized and
accepted, which man recognizes as the law of his own being. This can only be a law which has its origin
and reason in the beyond. We may call
it the law of spirit or, in Christian language, the law of God.[i]

A
lesson taken from Don Juan,
illustrates why erasing God’s Law
(moral code) is not a good idea. The
Devil asks, “What is the use of knowing [a moral philosophy]?” To this question Don Juan responds:

Why, to be able to choose the line of
greatest advantage instead of yielding in the direction of least
resistance. Does a ship sail to its
destination no better than a log drifts nowhither? The philosopher is Nature’s pilot. And there you have our difference: to be in hell is to drift: to
be in heaven is to steer.[ii]

Bultmann
writes that until one has appropriated the grace of God manifested in Christ’s
work, he is “alienated from life, enslaved
under hostile powers and in bondage to death.”[iii]

If
God is absent in your Christian life and the gates of heaven appear boarded up,
if spiritual roses are difficult
where you are, it is most likely not
a “Job scenario,” but a problem at your end of the relationship. God’s gracious offer of peace and salvation
requires one to have a receiving heart and true faith. You can accept God’s silence and frame your
response, as if under some wild (uncalled-for)
test as described in the Book of Job - the obedient righteous sufferer - and
choose the status quo, enduring
patiently another year, another decade, a life time. You can accept the silence as if worshipping a God who is unknowable,wholly mystery, in a world which is godforsaken, with a Law
which is unrevealed and choose to follow a socialgospel, doing your ethical best to improve God's creation in His absence. But neither approach will bring the desired spiritual roses. If God eludes churches upholding liberal
theologies, it is because God is not “there” to be received.

Liberal
theology is not obedience to God at all, but simply a deified humanity -
anything goes. The God of liberal
theology “has become nothing more than
the faint and disappearing smile of the cosmic Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland.” What voice was the UCC listening to when the
denomination decided to:

1960
- advocate abortion

1962
- sanction divorce and remarriage

1965
- condone pre-marital sex

1968
- issue a New Creed which does not name Jesus as God’s Son, Savior or Lord

1980
- issue a sex report approving of infidelity: “it [fidelity] includes openness to secondary relationships of
emotional intimacy and potential genital expression but with commitment to the
primary marriage.”

1984
- declare God indifferent to sexual orientations

1988
- allow unrepentant homosexuals who profess faith in Jesus Christ to join and
be ordained

1992
- declare the Bible errant in a report “The Authority and Interpretation of
Scripture”

And
in 2005, Rev. Dr. Jim Sinclair, General Secretary, declared, “Marriage will be enhanced, not diminished,
religious freedom will be protected, not threatened, and Canadian society will
be strengthened, not weakened, as a result of this [same-sex marriage]
legislation.”

God
will not be mocked. He wants a vibrant
relationship with the members of His flock (John 10:27-29) and with Christian
denominations. But only the person who
sees himself as a sinner can know God’s true measure of grace and we know
ourselves as sinners only in so far as we recognize God’s Law. Salvation is a gift of
grace. Prayer is a gift of grace. The peace of God is a gift of grace
(Philippians 4:7). True freedom is a
gift of grace. Faith is a gift of
grace. Everything you need is covered
in the gracious gift of Jesus Christ.
As long as you, your congregation and your denomination remain blinded
from recognizing the Law, it will
remain difficult to grow spiritual roses. If you are weary, the authentic Jesus Christ
has rest for your soul (Matthew 11:25-30); however, you will have to truly
acknowledge the Law and fully submit
to His divine lordship. You will
need to be re-potted to where spiritual roses aren’t difficult. Seek the true light for growing roses; flee a church that denies that Christ is
the only light. Seek the living
water, which Jesus declared before the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:
1-26); flee a church that denies this living water is the perfect
sustaining truth. Seek to find good nourishing soil; flee a church that picks and amends
scripture as if it is not the truth, not God inspired.

The
key to a green thumb, in the parable of the sower:

But the seed on good soil stands for
those with a noble and good heart, who hear the Word, retain it, and by
persevering produce a crop. (Luke 8:15)